Ceremony in honor of Silvia PROTOPAPA.
The Province of Lecce, the Municipality of Galatina and the Scientific High School A. Vallone organize a meeting to recognize the professional merits of the Galatinese Silvia Protopapa, an established international Astrophysicist and Principal Researcher at the Department of Space Studies of the prestigious Research Institute Southwest Research Institute, in Boulder in the State of Colorado (USA), as well as co-investigator of the New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission of NASA.
The New Horizons spacecraft, which has been traveling for 13 years, flew over the planet Pluto in 2015 and on 1 January 2019 flew over Ultima Thule, the farthest cosmic body ever reached by a probe. The meeting with Ultima Thule was celebrated with enthusiasm all over the world.
The musician and former guitarist of Queen Brian May (who has, among other things, a doctorate in Astrophysics) for the occasion has composed a new song, which has served as a soundtrack to the very distant and fascinating spatial face to face. Astrophysicist Silvia Protopapa, who is an integral part of the New Horizons scientific team, was born and raised in Galatina, attended the A. Vallone High School and graduated in Physics at the University of Lecce in 2005 with 110 and praise and applause. Since 2006 he has been traveling around the world at the most prestigious research institutes in the world: from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany), to the Department of Astronomy of the University of Maryland (USA) and from 2018 as Principal Scientist to the Department of Space Studies of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder (Colorado - USA).
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